


Many Mothers

by merrymegtargaryen



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Mentions of former abuse, Miscarriage, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-11
Updated: 2015-09-11
Packaged: 2018-04-20 07:04:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 8,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4778012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merrymegtargaryen/pseuds/merrymegtargaryen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My drabbles for fivewivesweek.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Angharad

Angharad relied on her mother for everything. Every scrape, every bruise, every broken heart was soothed with her mother's love. Her mother taught her how to braid her hair, how to skin and prepare fish, how to weave fishing nets, how to ride waves without going under. Even when she married Isabelle, she still spent hours at her parents' house, helping her mother weave or cook or just listening to her talk. 

When Angharad gives birth to a baby girl, she can't help smiling because even if it is his, even if she never wanted an Immortan child, she can still love this little girl the way her mother loved her. They are locked in a stone tower and not in the cottage by the sea, but Angharad can still teach her things, can still tell her stories, can still kiss away her cuts and scrapes. She can still love her.

But just as she's trying to think of a name to give her, a name that means as much to her as Angharad meant to her own mother, the Organic Mechanic bundles the baby away and takes the screaming child out of the Vault.

“Where are you taking my baby?” Angharad shouts, too tired and sore to put up much of a fight.

“To the Milking Mothers, of course,” the Immortan tells her. 

“Why? I can feed her just fine,” Angharad says desperately.

“I know you can, Splendid,” he soothes—or tries to. “But mothers can't conceive when they feed. As soon as you're well again, we'll try for another healthy baby. A boy this time.”

.

He lets her see her baby once a week. She is allowed to hold her, but only when he's watching. It's as if he's afraid she'll start breastfeeding as soon as he turns his back, as if she's trying to render herself incapable of conceiving.

She wishes it were that easy. 

.

The Immortan names their daughter The Splendid Filia Regina. In a language long dead, he tells her, it means “daughter-queen.” It's a stupid name.

In her head, Angharad calls the little girl “Aurora”. It means “the dawn”. She whispers it into Capable's ear late one night after seeing her baby, swears her to secrecy. Immortan Joe has taken too much from her—she will not let him have this. He will never fully own her daughter.

.

Angharad starts cutting herself again. She takes the razors he makes them shave their legs and armpits with and carefully drags the blade through the skin of her cheek and forehead. He tells her to stop, begs her to stop hurting herself—but she knows that really he just doesn't want her to keep damaging his property. He won't take the blades away, either, because as much as he hates the scars on her face, he still wants his Splendid as hairless and perfect as a newborn. He makes her sisters and Miss Giddy watch over her, but none of them have the heart to stand up to a determined Angharad. Even Furiosa pretends not to notice when she does it.

And then he puts two and two together.

Every time Angharad cuts herself, Joe denies her a visit with Aurora. Angharad rages and gives herself so many cuts out of spite that Capable finally wrestles the razor out of her hand. Angharad throws everything she can get her hands on, screaming herself hoarse while her sisters look on in horror. When the red rage finally passes, she falls into her bed and sleeps for days.

Ultimately, it works, and that's what infuriates Angharad the most. The razor hurts, but it doesn't hurt nearly as much as realizing she hasn't seen her daughter in weeks. She misses her baby, the way those little fingers curl around her own and the way her big blue eyes stare up at her. She misses the little noises she makes, the soft, warm feel of her in Angharad's arms.

And so she puts the razor away. The scars on her face heal even more messily than the ones on her arm, a cluster of angry white slashes that will never fully go away. 

“Even with the scars, you're still beautiful,” Toast says in a bitter sort of admiration, and it almost makes Angharad want to pull her razor back out and slash her face to ribbons. She's tired of being beautiful. Beautiful is what got her here. 

.

Her months of punishment pass, and finally she is allowed to see her daughter again. The little girl has grown so much and is so different that Angharad almost wonders if it was really worth it. She hardly knows the toddler who babbles an endless stream of words taught to her by another woman. This isn't the tiny infant she remembers holding. If it wasn't for those big blue eyes, Angharad would think there had been some mistake, that this wasn't her Aurora at all. 

“She's beautiful,” Miss Giddy says fondly.

Angharad doesn't say anything. She knows where beautiful gets you.

.

Aurora is almost two when Organic informs Angharad that she's pregnant again. He tells her this from between her spread legs, delivering the triumphant news to Immortan Joe while Angharad scowls down at him. Rictus, Corpus, Miss Giddy, and her sisters are there too. It's humiliating, all of them watching her like this. Not that it matters much—everyone is focused on the Immortan. Organic is congratulating him, Rictus is asking about a baby brother, and the women watch in silence. Angharad closes her eyes and waits to be left alone. 

Later, when the men have left and the women have fallen asleep and Angharad lies staring up at the ceiling, Capable slips into bed beside her.

“What are you going to do?” she whispers, as if Angharad has any say in the matter.

She thinks about it for a moment. “He's already taken one child from me,” she finally whispers back. “I won't let him take another. I don't care how I do it, but I won't let him have this baby.”

Capable strokes her hair. “Whatever you need...I'll help. We all will.” She touches her forehead to Angharad's. “You're not alone.”

.

For a while, Angharad thinks about killing the baby. She could “slip and fall” in just the right way, could find the right herbs on the Citadel's roof and eat them, could do so many things to make it look like an accident. But he would know. Or at least, he would suspect. He might not let her see Aurora again. He might put guards in the Vault to ensure it doesn't happen again.

She could kill herself. That would put a neat end to it. No more Immortan Joe inside her, no more babies being taken from her, no more aching to go home, no more, no more.

But then she thinks about her sisters. Thinks about Capable, who she spent all those months with in the Vault when it was just the two of them, who held her and who she held when it was all too much, who holds her and she holds still on those dark and lonely nights. Thinks about Cheedo, who is so young, who looks up to Angharad and needs the older woman to look out for her. Thinks about Toast and Dag, who never know when to stop pushing the Immortan's buttons, who may not be alive if Angharad hadn't stepped in for them all those times. How many times has she stood between her sisters and the Immortan? Who will stand between them if she dies? She thinks about Capable's good and gentle heart worn out by the Immortan, her kind words and soft smiles melting into blank stares. She thinks about Cheedo who she promised to look out for, a little girl turned into a woman long before her time. She thinks about Toast and Dag being punished, thinks about one punishment too many until their bodies are dragged out and replaced with younger, fresher faces. On and on it goes.

It's this thought that finally sends her to Furiosa.

“Take us with you,” she demands. Not begs, not asks, not requests—demands. “Take us to the Green Place of Many Mothers.”

.

It's the middle of the night when Furiosa comes for them. Angharad ushers the other women into the hold, whispers words of reassurance and squeezes their hands. Her stomach lurches as the rig descends from the Citadel, and she doesn't think it's just the swaying of the platform or the baby inside her. Aurora is up there, and Angharad will probably never see her again. She belongs completely to the Immortan now. The Splendid Filia Regina. It's enough to make Angharad feel sick.

OUR BABIES WILL NOT BE WARLORDS she painted beside their pool of water. She doesn't know if she'll ever forgive herself for leaving Aurora behind, for not loving her as a mother should love her child—but if she can raise this baby in the Green Place, if she can love it the way she was never able or allowed to love Aurora, the way Immortan Joe never wanted her to...well, it's not forgiveness, but it's something awful close.

Redemption, maybe.


	2. Capable

Capable is raised by many mothers.

It isn't until her family settles in Gas Town that she realizes it's unusual for people to have more than one mother. 

“You have four?” the other children ask in disbelief.

“There used to be a lot more of them,” she admits. “Most of them died, or went somewhere else.”

The other children in Gas Town only have one mother each—if they have any at all. Some of them even have fathers, which Capable thinks is strange. 

“Did I have a father?” she asks her mother.

“Once,” her mother says without looking at her. “Don't worry about him.”

Capable was never worried, but something about the way her mother says that makes her wonder if maybe she should be.

Capable decides she doesn't like the idea of just one mother and a father. When she has a baby, she decides, she's going to raise it with her mothers—not alone, not with a father, but with many mothers. 

.

When Organic looks at her from between her legs and tells her she's pregnant, Capable actually smiles. She doesn't care if it is the Immortan's baby—she is going to be a mother, and her child will have her and Angharad and Toast and Miss Giddy and the Milking Mothers to raise it. A child raised by many mothers, just like she always wanted.

“He won't let you keep it,” Angharad says. She would know—her own daughter had been taken from her as soon as she was born, and now Angharad could only see her once a week.

“That doesn't matter,” Capable lies.

She isn't stupid. She knows about the Immortan's previous wives, knows that for every one who bore a healthy baby, there were ten that did not. Knows that the likelihood of her child surviving the pregnancy, the birth, and still coming out mostly intact is slim to none. She knows that, but it still doesn't prepare her for the sight of the baby Organic pulls out of her three months too soon.

“There will be others,” everyone tells her when all she can do is curl up in her bed and stare at the wall.

It takes weeks of coaxing, from Angharad, from Miss Giddy, even from Immortan Joe, before Capable finally lets them pull her out of bed and back into reality. She lets Angharad and Miss Giddy bathe her and wrap her in fresh linens, and when the Immortan comes to the Vault that night she plays her guitar for him and then buries her face in her pillow while he tries to put another child in her. 

“There will be others,” he tells her when he's finished, putting what should be a soothing hand on her back. “I promise, there will be others.”

.

There is another—a miscarriage that happens so soon after Organic's pronouncement that Capable doesn't have time to feel anything but afraid. The Immortan only gives his wives three chances, and she's just lost two. If she loses a third child, that's the end of her. Angharad might be able to appeal to the Immortan, to let Capable work in the nursery—but more likely she'll be thrown out of the Citadel, left to scrape and starve with the Wretched or try her luck in the wasteland. She will die a slow and miserable death, and the thought haunts her for weeks.

“I'm so afraid,” she whispers to Angharad late one night. “I'm so afraid of being pregnant again.”

Angharad pulls her closer, her own pregnant belly pressed flush to Capable's empty one. “I won't let him do anything to you,” she vows. “I've been talking to Furiosa—she's going to get us out of here. She won't say when or how, just that she's going to take us away from here.”

“To where?” Capable asks.

“To the Green Place of Many Mothers,” Angharad whispers.

The name sends a shiver down Capable's spine. A green place is just fine, but a green place of many mothers...it sounds almost too good to be true. Like something she might have dreamed up when she was a child. But Furiosa isn't a dreamer, and Capable knows that if the imperator says she's going to take them away, she will keep her word. She lets herself imagine with Angharad, wondering what the Green Place will be like and what the Many Mothers are like and whether any of them know Capable's mothers. For the first time in a long time, she feels hopeful. 

.

It's seventy days to the date since the sisters returned to the Citadel with Immortan Joe's body and Angharad's dream when Capable realizes she's pregnant again. She lets herself be excited—with no Immortan looming over her, she can be the mother she always wanted to be. Angharad may not be here, and Capable would be lying if she said that didn't make her chest tight—but she has Toast and Dag and Cheedo and Furiosa and the Milking Mothers and the Vuvalini. She and Dag will raise their babies in the new world Angharad fought for, in this Green Place of Many Mothers.

She never considers that even if the Immortan is dead, this is still his child—and his children are not survivors. 

She's in the garage when it happens, and a gaggle of War Boys have to carry her up to the Vault. She knows it's too late by the time they get here there, their chalky white hands stained red with blood. Her sisters wash her and give her tea for the pain, but ultimately there is nothing any of them can do but wait. They make sure someone is always sitting with her, just in case—Dag offers to go first, but Capable can't stand looking at her pregnant belly, full and swollen with child.

It's Toast who ends up holding her hand late that night.

“I don't think I'll ever get to be a mother,” Capable murmurs, the darkness and quietness of the hour making her feel brave enough to voice the fear crawling at the back of her mind.

Toast makes a noise in the back of her throat. “Are you shitting me?”

Capable stares up at her. “What?”

Toast lies down beside her sister, looks her straight in the eye. “If anyone in this place is a mother, it's you,” she says. “Okay, so maybe you've never given birth to a living child. What does that matter? You take care of all of us.”

Capable opens her mouth to say that's not the same thing, but Toast isn't finished talking.

“You and Angharad were the first people I met here, the only other women in the Vault with me, and you were so kind to me. How many times have you held one of us or wiped away our tears or washed blood off of us or told us it would be okay? And you're like that with everyone. Your War Boy, Nux—you think he would've been on our side if he hadn't met you? Any other person would have shoved him off the rig or handed him over to Furiosa—not you. You showed him, I don't know, kindness and compassion, and if it hadn't been for him we would've died. And it wasn't just him, you got all the War Boys to be on our side. I thought Furiosa was gonna have to scare them all into submission, but they worship you.”

“That's just being kind,” Capable insists. “It has nothing to do with being a mother.”

“Fine,” Toast says in borderline irritation. “Do you know how many kids in the Citadel love you? The War Pups are always fighting to be around you. And Aurora...” Her voice catches at the mention of Angharad's little girl. “We all take care of her, but you're a real mother to her.” She reaches out to tuck some of Capable's wild red hair behind her ear. “My point is, what does or doesn't come from your womb doesn't determine your ability to be a mother. Capable, you are the best mother I have ever met in my entire life. You don't need Immortan Joe's fucked-up sperm to prove that.”

Capable doesn't quite know what to say to this, but that's okay because Toast doesn't appear to be waiting for an answer. The smaller girl slings an arm around Capable and pulls her close, and that seems to be the end of that. 

.

The bleeding stops for good ten days later. Capable is worn out, but otherwise she feels...fine. She wanted a baby, of course, and there will always be a part of her that yearns to hold her own child from her own womb—but Toast is right. Capable doesn't need to give birth to be a mother. 

She makes her way to the nursery and finds Cheedo sprawled on the floor with Aurora. The toddler looks up at her approach and lets out a shout, running on unsteady legs to the other woman. Capable catches her and swings her up into the air, smothering the little girl in kisses before blowing a raspberry on her tummy. 

“The Pups have been asking about you,” Cheedo says as Capable settles Aurora onto her hip. “They've missed you.”

“I've missed them,” Capable confesses. “Want to visit them with me?”

“Sure.” Cheedo hops up to follow her sister. “Hey, Capable,” she adds in a softer voice, a hand lingering over her shoulder. “I'm really sorry about...about the baby...”

“It's okay,” Capable tells her, and she's surprised to find that she means it. “There will be others.”

For once, the words don't sound so hollow.


	3. Toast

Toast has never wanted to be a mother.

In the first place, she doesn't know anything about being a mother. She never had a mother. Logically, she knows that someone had to have given birth to her, but she doesn't remember that person. She only remembers the tribe of young boys in the wasteland who carried her on their backs by day and fed her lizards and whatever else they could catch by night. They slept in dog piles for warmth and wrestled with each other when they were bored, and when Toast was old enough they taught her how to fight too. They were the ones who gave her that name—Toast. (She never learned why). Their clumsy attempts at raising her were the closest she ever got to any kind of parenting. After they were picked up by War Boys from the Bullet Farm, she was put to work in the saltpeter mines and spent her nights sleeping in whatever nook she could find. There were no mothers there.

So when they took her the Citadel and told her she was going to be Immortan Joe's new wife and bear his children, she laughed in their faces. 

“The fuck I am,” she said. Toast knew a lot of things, but being a mother was not one of them. 

.

She's been in the Vault for three hundred days when Organic tells her she's pregnant.

“The fuck I am,” she says, and she knows that were it not for the child inside her, Immortan Joe would punish her for that. As it is, he lets it slide, because this might just be the healthy male heir he's been waiting for. 

“I don't know how to be a mother,” Toast says when the Immortan and Organic leave.

“It doesn't matter,” Angharad says bitterly. “It's not like he lets you be one anyway.”

Angharad's own daughter was taken from her, and she has every reason to be bitter. But that isn't what Toast is worried about. She feels sick just thinking of a living being growing inside her, slowly taking over her body until she bleeds it out or worse, gives birth to it. Maybe it's the pregnancy, but Toast can't hold down food for literal days. 

“Just morning sickness,” Miss Giddy tries to reassure her, but Toast wishes it was something worse, something toxic enough to kill the thing growing inside her.

“How do you feel?” Capable asks with soft eyes. Capable wants a baby more than anything, especially after losing her own just a few months before. Toast doesn't have the heart to tell her that she would rather jump off the roof than be pregnant.

.

Toast doesn't know how to be a mother, but she does know how not to be one. All she has to do is listen to the things everyone tells her not to do.

She wakes her sisters up in the middle of the night with blood between her legs and impressive hysterics. By the time Organic and the Immortan make it to the Vault, it's too late.

Toast knows a lot of things, and not being a mother is one of them.

.

“You know he'll send you away if you can't give him what he wants,” Angharad tells her early one morning when it's just the two of them staring out the blurry glass of their window and watching the sun rise.

Toast makes a noise in the back of her throat. “Good. I hate it here.”

Angharad raises an eyebrow. “That doesn't bother you? Being thrown out of the Citadel and left to fend for yourself?”

“I fended for myself just fine until they brought me here,” Toast reminds her. “As soon as my three chances are up, I'm out of here. Hell, I miss roughing it—I've gotten too soft in this place.

Angharad turns to look out the window. “You're rough, Toast, but you're not rough enough for what's out there.”

“The fuck I am,” says Toast.

Angharad smiles.

.

“Do you have to be a mother to be one of the Many Mothers?” Toast asks as the women stare up at the sky.

“Depends on how you define 'mother', I suppose,” one of the Vuvalini tells her. “Not every mother gives birth, and not everyone who gives birth is a mother.”

“When the Many Mothers first came into being,” a second adds, “It was a group of women seeking refuge from the chaos the world was falling into. They wanted a safe place for them and their children, away from the men who had hurt them. Over the years we became a safe haven for all women and children, a place they could turn to when they had nowhere else to go. I have never given birth to a child—many of us haven't. We are all still Mothers.”

Toast absorbs this. She has never wanted to be a mother—but she understands what it is to run from men. She thinks of Angharad and all the other women who lost their lives because of Immortan Joe. She thinks of all the women who have ever lost their lives because of men like him. She thinks of the rag-tag group of motherless boys who raised her in the wasteland, thinks of all the other motherless children who were not as lucky as her. She thinks of Furiosa risking her life to deliver them out of the hands of Immortan Joe, thinks of the Vuvalini preparing to take them on the hundred-and-sixty-day-ride across the salt.

Toast doesn't know how to be a mother, but she thinks maybe she could learn.

“How do you become one of the Many Mothers, then?” she asks.

The Vuvalini exchange amused glances. “Think you're up to snuff?”

“The fuck I am,” says Toast.

The Vuvalini laugh. Toast can't help but smile.


	4. Dag

For as long as she can remember, Dag has been unwanted. “You're too...” is how the explanations start.

Too ugly.

Too skinny.

Too loud.

Too weird.

Too much.

It's the reason she's been passed to so many different tribes. None of them want her for long—she makes them all nervous. 

When she gets sold to Immortan Joe, he doesn't sell her to another warlord the way she thought he might. He keeps her, and for the first time in her life she wishes she didn't have the unsettling feeling that she belongs here. 

“No one's ever wanted me anywhere,” she makes the mistake of saying out loud one night. 

“I will always want you,” he tells her, his hand on her leg.

Dag has never wanted to be unwanted before, but now it is the only thing she wants. She makes herself as undesirable as possible—she smears makeup on her face, leaves her hair uncombed, only eats when she's too hungry to ignore the pain in her stomach, talks too often and too loudly, gives herself markings on her fingers and bites her nails and just makes herself too much. 

The Immortan punishes her for it. He has never been gentle before, but now he is only ever rough. When he decides to take Cheedo, Dag lets fly words even she has been holding back. The only reason she gets up and walks away after the things he does to her is to spite him. But the worst thing he does is put a baby in her belly.

She can't get rid of it, of course, because he would know. She could make it look like an accident, just another miscarriage, but he would still know. Or at any rate, he would find a way to make her pay for it. No, she'll have to keep this baby and hope for her own sake that it doesn't miscarry or die in birth or come out horribly twisted and deformed. As much as she would love that, would love to see the disappointment in his eyes, she isn't ready for another thrashing at his hands. 

She's still trying to figure out how she can win, how she can give birth to a healthy son and still make sure he's nothing like his father, when Furiosa comes for them in the middle of the night. Dag doesn't have time to think about the baby in her belly much after that—there is always a more pressing, more immediate danger. The baby won't come for months yet, but there's a furious fixation behind them right now. 

.

It isn't until they've found what remains of the Many Mothers and finally, finally have a moment to breathe that Dag even thinks about the baby again. 

“Stay right where you are, Little Joe,” she says to her belly. She isn't sure if she's being ironic or not. “Kind of lost its novelty out here.”

“You havin' a baby?” says the Vuvalini standing watch with her, an older woman they call the Keeper of the Seeds.

“Warlord Junior,” Dag says with a grimace. “Gonna be so ugly.”

“It could be a girl,” the old woman says.

Dag doesn't know what to think about that. That's all right, she decides—it's a hundred-and-sixty-day-ride across the salt, with nothing to pass the time but her own thoughts. She can think about it then. 

.

One hundred and sixty days pass, but they don't pass on a motorcycle going across the salt—they pass, to Dag's great surprise, in the Citadel. Or, as she and her sisters are trying to call it now, the Green Place.

One hundred and sixty days pass far too quickly as they build a new world, and one morning Dag gets out of bed, looks down, and realizes she can't see her own feet. It scares her more than it should, and she spends most of the day biting her fingernails. 

There's a part of her that thinks about getting rid of the baby. She doesn't want to induce a miscarriage or anything like that—whatever her feelings about children, she doesn't think she could emotionally handle it. Maybe she could ask Capable to raise it, or let it wander around with the other unwanted children of the Citadel.

It's that word that makes her stop.

Unwanted.

Dag thinks about a small child being passed from person to person, clinging to older children only to be shaken off or pushed to the side. She thinks about a child curling up in corners and trying to stay out of the way. She thinks of an endless flood of voices telling them:

“You're too ugly.”

“You're too skinny.”

“You're too loud.”

“You're too weird.”

“You're too much.”

She thinks of an unwanted child knowing that they are unwanted and wishing that just for a moment, they could feel like they belong somewhere.

It could be a girl.

“Stay right where you are, little one,” she says to her belly.

.

Dag's water breaks while she's pulling weeds. Harper walks her around the Vault, encouraging her to keep breathing long, steady breaths until she's ready to deliver. 

“I'm ready now,” Dag complains, but Harper smiles and tells her to be patient.

The sun has set by the time the baby arrives, its little body slick with blood and whatever else as its little lungs fill with its first scream. Dag has a mad sort of appreciation for her baby at that moment. She falls back against her sisters, covered in sweat and utterly exhausted, and watches as the Vuvalini cut the umbilical cord and clean up the screaming little sprog. 

“She's got good, strong lungs,” Bettany says.

“She?” Dag echoes.

Bettany smiles. “You've got yourself a healthy little girl.”

Dag's fingers twitch.

When they finally set the baby in Dag's arms, she feels her heart literally skip a beat. For more days than she can count, she's been expecting some ugly, twisted boy covered in lumps and bumps, with sickly pale skin and yellow eyes like his father's. A Warlord Junior. But this little girl, so small and so perfect she almost doesn't seem real, is nothing like that sick old man. There isn't a single thing Immortan about her.

“She's beautiful,” Cheedo breathes. “What are you going to name her?”

Dag smiles, touching her daughter's hand. The little girl's fingers twitch and then close around her own. It's a surprisingly firm grip, and Dag takes this as a good omen. “I was thinking...Angharad.”

She can feel the collective intake of breath, the weight as the idea settles. 

“That's a beautiful name,” Capable says softly. “A-Angharad, one time she, she told me it means 'much loved'.”

“She is,” Dag says. “She really is.”


	5. Cheedo

Cheedo has always known she was meant to be a mother. Even before she was brought up to the Citadel and told she would someday be the Immortan's wife, she always just knew that she was going to have children. Not a child, singular, but children, plural. 

She just didn't expect it to happen the way that it does.

.

It happens like this:

After the inhabitants of the Citadel turn their loyalty to the sisters, the second generation of the Many Mothers, Dag gives birth to a baby girl who she names Angharad. Cheedo thinks, distantly, of having her own baby someday, a tiny thing that needs her and who she needs to be needed by. Someday, she thinks—she is too young and too busy right now. Besides, she has little Angharad, and the first Angharad's daughter Aurora, and a legion of War Pups. Someday.

.

Twenty-five hundred days (and then some) after the Immortan's death, Capable gives birth to a healthy little boy who she names Reliable. Cheedo can't help but dote on him—Aurora and Angharad are too big to be carried anymore and they are fast outgrowing bedtime stories and songs. The War Pups are mostly grown now too, and Cheedo leaps at the chance to fawn on another baby. 

She's thought about having one of her own, has even tried coupling with a few partners, but it never does anything for her except make her uncomfortable. It doesn't matter—she's still young, younger than most women when they have children. And besides, she has a nephew to take care of. She'll think about having her own baby some other day.

.

Word spreads through the wasteland that a host of women now control the Citadel. 

This brings a number of curious visitors—some friendly, others not-so-friendly. Fortunately, most of their visitors are friendly, and many of them are orphans. Cheedo's heart breaks for all of them, and she determines to be as much a mother to them (yes, all of them) as if she had given birth to them herself. She sews clothes for them and kisses their hurts and tells them stories and sings them to sleep. 

“Mother Cheedo,” a little girl asks her one day, “Will you ever have any children of your own?”

“Someday,” Cheedo tells her. Several years have come and gone, and she's now at the age she once considered appropriate for having children. It will happen, she promises herself vaguely. Someday.

.

The children never stop coming, and Cheedo never runs out of love to give. Dag has another baby. She's ready this time—sixteen years of raising one child has prepared her well for a second one. Cheedo thinks dimly that it would be nice to have a child of her own about this time, one that's close to Keeper's age and could grow up with him, but she doesn't give it too much thought; she's still relatively young, after all, and she has plenty of time. 

Someday.

.

Years pass in the blink of an eye. Before Cheedo quite knows it, Keeper is getting too big to be carried, Reliable drives out on patrols, Angharad has been given charge of the second garden (one is not enough anymore), and Aurora is pregnant.

It's the first child of a new generation, and all the sisters feel quite old. They were all young when Angharad was born, they know, and it will be many years yet before they can truly be called “old”, but it still feels strange to watch this child they raised carry her own little one. For most of Angharad's life, the women worked to reconstruct the Citadel and build a new world. Angharad's child is going to live in that new world, is never going to know the feeling of an empty stomach or a parched tongue or an Immortan's “blessing”. 

Cheedo prides herself on being strong, so she's mortified when Dag finds her crying in her bed.

“I'm being stupid,” she insists, refusing to meet her sister's gaze.

“It's not stupid if you feel it,” Dag says.

Cheedo is quiet for a moment, tries to collect her thoughts. “I always wanted children. I always knew I was going to be a mother. And I'm able to have children, I just...I don't think I'm ever going to. I don't like being with anyone, like, like that, and even if I did, it's never the right time, there's always so much to do...”

Dag lets out a soft laugh. “I love you, Cheedo, but I think your skull may have grown a bit thick. Do you know how many children you've raised? And you don't think you're a mother?”

Cheedo blinks at her. “But...but they're not mine--”

“Of course they are—as much as they can be anybody's.” Dag tucks her hair behind her ear. Even now, over twenty years later, she can't help wanting to take care of the younger woman. “I gave birth to Angharad and Keeper, but you're just as much a mother to them as I am. It's the same way with Aurora and Reliable. And don't even get me started on the orphans.”

“They're not mine,” Cheedo starts to protest again, but Dag is having none of it.

“Oh, yes they are. You've shown them more love and kindness than anyone ever has. I've watched you kiss their scraped-up knees and teach them to read and spend all night by their bedsides when they have a fever. You'd never let anything happen to any of them, but just because they didn't come from your body you think that makes them any less yours?”

Cheedo doesn't know what to say to this, because she's never thought about it like this before. Of course she takes care of them, and of course she helps raise her sisters' children—does that really make her a mother? It doesn't seem like it should be that simple.

“Maybe it isn't the way you imagined it being or the way you wanted it to be,” Dag says softly. “But I can think of hundreds of children who would be very crushed if they found out you didn't consider yourself their mother.”

And again, Cheedo has never thought about it like this before, but Dag is right. It isn't the motherhood she imagined for herself, not in a hundred years—but it is the motherhood she has been given. Maybe 'given' isn't the right word; maybe 'chosen' is a better one. This is the motherhood she has chosen.

.

Aurora goes into labor in the middle of the day. Her Many Mothers surround her, offering years' worth of experience and advice until Aurora tells them (using a string of colorful phrases she undoubtedly picked up from Dag) to shut up. Cheedo is the one who catches the baby as it slips out, happy tears coming to her eyes as the little girl lets out her first cry. It's Cheedo who washes her and wraps her in a blanket before tucking her into her mother's arms. 

Cheedo repeats this ritual many times over the years—for Aurora, for Reliable's lover, for the orphans of the wasteland she took in and cared for. The children never stop coming, and Cheedo never runs out of love to give them. Her songs and bedtime stories become a nightly ritual in the great assembly hall, members of all generations gathering around to hear stories they have heard a hundred times over. She inks the songs and stories onto her skin so that she won't forget them. She doesn't think she could, but it helps her to have them like this, and it makes her think of another woman with songs in her heart and stories on her skin.

.

“Mother Cheedo,” a little girl asks after the story one night,“Do you have any children?”

Cheedo smiles, the crow's feet at her eyes crinkling. “I have a thousand children,” she says. “And the number grows all the time.”


	6. Tallarah

There had been a time when she'd been his Favorite.

Tallarah the Charming had been a pretty, healthy girl when she'd come into the Vault. The woman Rictus had had to carry to the milking chamber three years later was so stretched and worn that she was hardly recognizable. They fed her until she felt sick, wove her long, thick hair into tight braids against her head, sat her in a chair, handed her a poor imitation of a baby, clamped tubes onto her breasts, and took her mother's milk from her. When the Immortan came through the room the next day, his eyes barely skimmed over her.

Tallarah hated the Immortan, had never enjoyed his attention, but his ignoring her felt like a punch to the gut. She used to be his favorite. Her supple body and the potential for a healthy baby had given her some small measure of power. Not enough to stop his visits, not enough to get her out of the Vault, but just enough to distract her. She had something he wanted, something he couldn't take by force. 

It wasn't that way with milk, and Tallarah had plenty of it. She spent weeks glaring at the wall as they milked her, wishing she could will her body to stop. She felt like her own breasts were betraying her, giving milk she had never wanted to give while the Immortan looked at her as listlessly as if she was a stranger. Before long she became convinced that he really didn't remember her at all. And no wonder—she had gained so much weight with all the food they gave her, and her mane of black hair had been bound so tightly to her forehead. She barely recognized herself when she caught sight of her reflection these days.

.

When Furiosa and four of the five wives take back the Citadel, the Immortan's army trapped in the canyon and his body ripped to shreds by the throng of Wretched, everything changes. 

“We are not things,” the women chant, the mantra their fallen sister taught them. The War Boys stop scarring their bodies, the blood bags are released, the milking mothers freed from their stone tower. Some of the women volunteer to keep providing milk, just as some of the blood bags volunteer to donate when needed. 

Tallarah doesn't volunteer her milk. After it's been taken from her for so many years, it feels good to withhold it, to tell someone no and know that they will listen. It has been years since she had this much agency, and it feels, well, good.

She delights in the word no. She says it often, partly because she means it but partly because she gets a thrill whenever she says it. She says no to the War Boys when they come asking for help, and it makes her almost giddy when they frown and turn away. Not sneer at her, not spit at her, not call her names or strike her or do any of the things she knows men can do. They hear the word no and they listen.

Tallarah learns to tell herself no too. She takes a perverse kind of pleasure in feeling the sharp stabs of hunger in her belly from going hours without something to eat. No, she thinks, waiting until she is so hungry she is sick from starvation. 

Her denying food, as well as the freedom to move around, melts away most of her milking weight. She unwinds her hair, shakes it loose and combs it out until it resembles the proud mane of black it once was. She goes to an old and spotted mirror, hopes to see a vision of the girl she was before—but she is unrecognizable, from both the girl who was dragged into the Vault and the woman who was carried out of it. She doesn't look like the shell of a woman who who hobbled out of the milking chamber, either. She looks...like what?

It unsettles her. She comes back to the mirror, often, to try and get used to the stranger she sees there. Slowly, she learns to become okay—not comfortable, but okay—with the woman who stares back at her. The way her hair parts, the set of her jaw. How one eye is just ever-so-wider than the other. She's familiar with the stranger after a time, but she still isn't convinced this is who she is.

One of the men who was once Wretched, a wiry man named Bill, sees her go to the mirror every so often.

“You sure like looking at yourself,” he comments one day.

“I'm not sure it's myself I'm looking at,” she admits, and for some reason, this makes him laugh.

Tallarah likes Bill. She likes the rough, warm feel of his hands. She likes the laugh that he makes deep in his chest. She likes the way he makes her feel beautiful without having to say anything. She likes the way he feels inside her, the noises he makes and the shift of his hips. Mostly, she likes that when she tells him no, he stops. Sweat beading on his forehead, practically trembling in her arms, he doesn't move a muscle until she tells him he can. She loves how safe it feels, how much power she has for the first time in a long time.

“No,” she sighs, nearly sending herself over the edge with the immediacy of his compliance. “No, no, no.”

.

They move into one of the new housing units together. It's small—a tiny common area, an even tinier bedroom, and a miniscule water closet—but it's theirs, her and Bill's, and it isn't the Vault or the milking chamber and Tallarah likes that.

She walks in one day to find a mirror propped up against the wall of their bedroom. 

“Thought you might like it,” Bill tells her. “Thought maybe you could try to figure out who you're looking at.”

Tallarah doesn't know how she feels about the stranger from the mirror sharing a room with them, but she feels that somehow this is one thought she can't voice to Bill. Instead she watches the stranger—when she's moving around the room, when she wakes up in the morning. When she combs out her hair after a shower, when she and Bill make love in their bed. 

And Tallarah starts to notice something.

This stranger, whoever she is, is a happy woman. She isn't the timid, frightened girl who came into the Vault, or the worn and stretched woman who was carried out of it, or the used and listless milking mother who gathered all of her strength to give water to the Wretched. This woman smiles and laughs and sings, has a beautiful mane of hair she spends hours combing, has a lover who moves in the most delicious ways beneath her. This woman is full of life.

Bill sees her looking into the mirror when they are together. 

“Figured out who you're looking at yet?” he asks her.

“Not quite,” she says slowly. “But I think...I want to be her.”

It sounds mad when she says it out loud, but Bill just laughs, that laugh she likes that comes from deep in his chest. The woman in the mirror smiles.


	7. Many Mothers

Retaking the Citadel is easier than the women thought it would be—but that isn't to say it's very easy at all.

The Milking Mothers and the War Pups and the Wretched flock to Furiosa and the sisters, and what little resistance they are met with is quickly and efficiently dealt with. Some of the War Boys from the canyon make it back to the Citadel. Some of them want to be part of the new world. Others do not. 

“No unnecessary killing!” Capable insists, tears in her eyes as Furiosa takes aim.

“Believe me, it's necessary,” Furiosa tells her before shooting.

The survivors from the canyon don't give them much trouble after that.

The War Boys who stay are put to new work. The defenses should hold if anyone else comes trying to avenge the Immortan's death or to take advantage of the Citadel's ample water and produce, so the sisters focus on housing for the Wretched, on a plumbing system that allows water to be used and not wasted, on providing food for all the new and hungry mouths. Once word spreads that women are now ruling the Immortan's Citadel, newer and hungrier mouths turn up at the gates all the time. If it were up to Toast and Furiosa, they would just have to wait at the gates until the Citadel had room and food enough for them, but Capable and Cheedo can't bear to let anyone starve. 

“If we take in every hungry straggler who comes along, there'll be no room and no food left,” Furiosa says.

“It's cruel--” Capable starts to argue.

“It's a cruel world,” Toast snaps. “We're not doing it to be cruel, we just have to think about ourselves before we can let ourselves go hungry.”

“Thought somehow we were above all that,” Dag mutters.

In the end, Capable leads a contingent of War Boys in setting up canvas tents as temporary housing for these newcomers. She organizes a system so that small food and water rations can be sent down to them, with promises that as soon as there's more room, more food, more space, they can come up. Furiosa doesn't miss the heartsick look in Capable and Cheedo's eyes when they look down at these new Wretched, but she doesn't say anything. She knows they'll learn soon enough.

.

It's been almost seven hundred days since the women took the Citadel when a car rumbles its way up the beaten road. It's coasting on fumes now, and the engine sputters out as it rolls to a slow halt. 

“We've got more mouths,” Dag calls. Angharad, sitting in the little carrier on Dag's back that the Vuvalini rigged for her, gurgles and tries to grab a handful of her mother's hair. Dag either doesn't notice or doesn't care as she gathers a basketful of green to send down.

Capable and Cheedo go to greet the newcomers, a gaggle of curious Pups clinging to their hands and legs. The two women step lightly off the platform when it rocks into place on the ground, the Pups bounding along in their wake as they move towards the car. They see multiple bodies, assume it's a family of some kind—so they are stunned when twelve children, none of them older than eight or nine and some of them as young as two or three, tumble out of the car.

“Did you drive that?” Cheedo asks in shock.

“Uh-huh,” the boy from the driver's seat says, his dreadlocks swaying as he nods.

“Where did you come from?” Capable asks, taking in the sight of them. They're dirty and stick-thin, and they would benefit from a good scrub and a bowl of stew. She wishes there was a way to sneak them into the Citadel, but with twelve of them, she doesn't think that likely.

“From the Big Rock,” says a girl with ratty braids, one of the younger children resting on her hip. “Our parents, they went out...they didn't come back for days and days and days. They used to tell us about this place, said there was plenty for everyone.”

“Are we here? Did we make it?” pipes up another child.

“To the Citadel?” Capable supplies with a warm smile. 

“To the Green Place of Many Mothers,” the girl with ratty braids says, her brown eyes wide.

The two women exchange a look. They don't know what to say. 

“You made it.”

They look, startled, at one of the Pups. He takes a tentative step forward. “This is the Green Place of Many Mothers.”

The rest of the Pups take up the words.

“Yes, the Green Place!”

“The Green Place of Many Mothers!”

One of them takes the basketful of green from Dag and passes it to the children, who shout with delight at the sight of it. Capable and Cheedo go to set up a tent—loath as they are to leave the children out here, there's no possible way they can justify it to Furiosa. They're just tying it off when Cheedo nods. “Look.”

Capable turns in the direction Cheedo is nodding and sees the Pups turning on the spigot, splashing water on the dirty newcomers. The new children give excited shouts, running towards the spray of water. Dimly, Capable remembers another time in another place with another group of children. 

“Do you think it could be?” Cheedo asks quietly. “Another Green Place, I mean?”

Capable thinks about it, smiles. “I think it already is.”

Cheedo smiles back. Capable puts her arm around the younger girl as they watch the children play in the water. 

“I can't wait for them to see it.”


End file.
